TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE: Is It Deep or Dumb? – Wisecrack Edition

what's up everybody jared here today we're talking about everyone's favorite movie with puppet sex team america world police the film which creators matt stone and trey parker imagined as a jerry bruckheimer flick with puppets raised plenty of eyebrows when it was released though reviews were generally positive it lampoons both mainstream american conservatism and liberalism we must take radical action against the fascists in our own country during the iraq war and the war on terror there's no denying that 15 years later the film is still very very funny but as political satire it's worth asking is it smart political satire or just an excuse to sing about how bad the film pearl harbor is i miss you more than michael bay missed the mark when he made pearl harbor let's find out in this wisecrack edition on team america world police deep or dumb and as everybody knows spoilers ahead alright guys let's do a quick recap gary johnston is just your average stage actor performing in a musical about aids that is until a man named spotswood recruits him to join an elite military squad devoted to fighting terrorists that squad team america travels the globe trying to stop extremists armed with weapons of mass destruction while leaving a trail of destruction in their wake [Music] their actions are protested by the likes of sean penn alec baldwin and other famous hollywood actors in the film actors guild gary must use his acting skills to infiltrate a terrorist cell and prevent an attack even worse than 911 from what intelligence has gathered it would be nine eleven times a hundred nine eleven times a hundred jesus that's yes 91 100. one that is actually being masterminded by kim jong-il before we get into the merits of the film it's important to understand its historical context team america was released a mere year and a half after the us invasion of iraq in 2003 in the lead-up to the invasion president george w bush used the phrase axis of evil during his january 2002 state of the union address to describe the governments of north korea iran and iraq these regimes bush alleged exported terror and actively sought weapons of mass destruction which posed a danger to america in the wake of 9 11. much of this context shines in specific jokes france who was heavily criticized for not joining the american coalition to invade iraq is the first victim of a terrorist attack hans blix a real-life weapons inspector who found no evidence of chemical weapons in iraq finds himself threatened by kim jong-il before being eaten by sharks the film's preoccupation with wmds spoke to ongoing fears of attacks by terrorists or foreign governments with nuclear weapons dirty bombs or chemical weapons put down the weapon of mass destruction and get on the ground now there are two main ideas we're going to cover today how the film satirizes american foreign policy and how the film satirizes actors protesting that foreign policy so let's get into the first american foreign policy during the bush era the basic tension of the film was summarized by a new york times article in 2004. matt stone and trey parker hate the war in iraq however they suspected it might be necessary the very title team america world police is a jab at neoconservatism a political ideology prominent in the bush administration that promoted american intervention globally to promote peace and democracy in other words if you were a dictator not living up to the usfa's standards on human rights the old red white and blue had some cruise missiles with your name on them or more simply for neoconservatives dictators like saddam hussein or kim jong-il were prime targets for regime change of course the idea that america should go around saving the world has one big shortcoming americans themselves much of the film's subtext suggests that when it comes to world affairs americans are self-centered dunces when the film cuts to establishing shots of france egypt panama or north korea each location is marked in relation to its distance from america as in it's the center of the world while paris france follows the standard for denoting a city followed by its country places like cairo and the panama canal are described as being in the middle east or central america the joke being that americans can't be bothered to learn where a place is aside from its vague geographic area and if they do know well they need to show it cairo that's in egypt each foreign location also comes adorned with lazy stereotyping france's streets are made of croissants while the people spout stereotypical phrases like meanwhile in cairo terrorists repeat nonsense words like durka mixed with muhammad and jihad [Music] later the people of panama are depicted carrying around weed playing steel drums and screaming as they're swept up in a flood and kim jong-il's palace is surrounded by menacing mountains and an ominous red glow befitting for a member of bush's axis of evil oh and also some of the buildings are just chinese takeout boxes this general ignorance informs most of team america's actions as spotswood admits he thought the terrorist mastermind would be middle eastern not asian kim jong-il why is he helping terrorists when gary undergoes a state-of-the-art surgery to blend in with egyptians he's essentially given patchy pubes and brown face also he wears a towel on his head in lieu of a turban so there's that more importantly team america in the name of saving the world causes wanton destruction everywhere they go damn i missed him after seeing team america triumphantly declare victory over terrorism amidst the chaos they have just wrought the question is clear are we the baddies the term blowback is a term coined by the cia in a 1953 memo that described the possible unintended effects of their covert operation to overthrow the iranian government that memo would become prescient after the cia staged a coup to solidify the iranian monarch's power another revolution would depose him more than 20 years later this time with an open hostility to america and their role in supporting the shah blowback was an increasingly relevant topic during the war on terror especially as people wondered if growing up in a war zone might make one predisposed to recruitment into an anti-american terrorist organization it's a connection team america explicitly draws with scenes like this we have put out a jihad on the infidels because they destroyed our lives or as the team casually destroys some merchants livelihood when they land author and professor chalmers johnson argued our military interventions to stop terrorism would only create more desperate and embittered childless parents and parentless children and so recruit more maddened people to the terrorist cause what you're doing here is creating a mexican joker but as much as the film seems to understand blowback things get a little muddled with its crowning idea the philosophy of dicks oopsies and a-holes first heard from a drunk guy in a bar gary recites this wisdom at the climax of the film it goes something like this there are three kinds of people dicks who just want to [ __ ] everything [ __ ] who want everyone to get along and holes who just [ __ ] on everyone seas don't like dicks because they get [ __ ] by dicks but dicks also [ __ ] holes which is why [ __ ] should be grateful for the message is dictators like kim jong-il or saddam hussein are holes [ __ ] on the world oppressing their citizens and posing a threat to everyone around them american interventionists are the juiced up blowhards listening to toby keith thinking they can bomb their problems into oblivion and everyone protesting the dicks are the [ __ ] bleeding heart liberals who naively think that being nice can stop terrorism importantly gary realizes that sometimes dick's too hard and it takes a [ __ ] to show him that and thus there is a kind of functionalist balance to american society where take care of hostile a-holes while [ __ ] complain loud enough to stop their worst excesses parker and stone are more or less reiterating the message behind south park's 100th episode i'm a little bit country in it the townsfolk realized the secret to american success is having half of its citizens aggressively advocating for war while the other half aggressively protest war the strength of this country is the ability to do one thing and say another in this way america can be the world's police while pretending they don't want to be of course the sentiment is somewhat nonsensical as even the show admits let the flag for hypocrisy i hate this town i really really do it seems then that the film is arguing for the status quo or at least comically justifying it and if you're like most americans you probably agree the status quo is itself the real whole [ __ ] on us all the best correlate to what we're going to call the dap philosophy is political realism it stresses that in international relations pretty much everyone is a dick and a state should focus on its own self-interest when interacting with other nations while there are a few different ways to theorize the international realm a competing theory to realism is liberalism which focuses on how international actors often come together to cooperate so [ __ ] in the parlance of team america team america suggests that the ideal solution is somewhere in between where the machiavellian actions of realists are reigned in by a counter philosophy it gets tricky when we enter into act holes because souls are more or less indistinguishable from dicks just as want to [ __ ] everyone [ __ ] want to sh on everyone so what differentiates king from [ __ ] is being a slightly more benevolent form of thing is it if they're the aforementioned axis of evil they [ __ ] and as the film previously suggested aren't the just spawning more [ __ ] what if their incessant [ __ ] just creates isis which was formed by a guy who became powerful only after colin powell said he was a prime target of the us iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by abu musab al-zakawi will any level of king spawn more holes or just [ __ ] too hard so on foreign policy the movie points to some real criticisms properly dunking on everyone but it doesn't offer a clear solution so much as it suggests we're all idiots so kinda deep but let's get to the other criticism celebrities aside from us interventionism team america's second satirical target is the people who protested it specifically actors celebrities like sean pan and janine garofalo regularly appeared on cable news to debate the merits of the war in an interview with 60 minutes parker and stone complained that the opinions of famous people crowded out the opinions of actual experts on the news when sean penn is on tv on cnn during the before the iraq war talking about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty super funny that is that is pure comet gold the question is what about acting makes someone uniquely qualified to as sean penn did comment on the treaty of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons or why did janine graflow get to appear on fox news only to recycle an argument she read in a paper as actors it is our responsibility to read the newspapers and then say what we read on television like it's our own opinion this critique is all over the film both overtly and more subtly the film actors guild thinks they know how to achieve world peace even their deliberations visually evoke the united nations gary's unique qualifications for team america rely on a fantasy in which acting is some superpower in the war on terror like it or not you're the one with the power to do something the cutting edge technology that allows him to infiltrate the terrorist organization is none other than bad plastic surgery a specialty among hollywood's elite okay so on a basic level it's an apt jab at major news networks who put celebrities on tv to comment on serious matters for no other reason than they're famous as stone told the new york times an actor convinces himself he's doing something important to the world you're an actor all you do is read lines also embedded into their characterization of celebrities is an air of what i'll call smelling your own farts perhaps nobody embodies the spirit of deeply inhaling one's fecal tinged expulsions more than sean penn i look back and i didn't work hard enough to keep this admin you know as one individual to keep this administration from taking power his argument is that his status enables him to spread important information that people would otherwise ignore which might be true but this is also from the guy that allegedly hired a photographer to follow him around while he saved people in haiti and whether you agree or disagree with him he often echoes points made by more qualified experts for some actors it seemed their prominence made them qualified to reshape the world in their image a sentiment the film takes to task puppet pen brags about how he visited iraq and only saw flowery meadows and gumdrop smiles last year i went to iraq before team america showed up it was a happy place they had flowery meadows and rainbow skies and and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles a joke rooted in the fact that the real pen did prior to the invasion travel to iraq he commented on how kind the people he met were the iraqi people are you know as warm as people get but the flowery meadows line is a bit of a mischaracterization of his real opinions penn was also quick to call saddam hussein a monster and talk about the horrible conditions the citizens of iraq were living in due to international sanctions so the idea that people like penn were [ __ ] who were unable or unwilling to admit how shitty the situation in iraq was seems a little off base now there might be a deeper philosophy here one argued by our favorite dan harmon look-alike slavoy zizek jija criticizes the left for predicating their support for people like refugees on their alleged angelic nature that we should welcome them because they are all perfect wholesome humans but for zheck going through the kind of horrific tragedies that cause people to seek asylum does not make them morally elevated they're just as flawed as everybody else it's not that he thinks we shouldn't welcome them but that one's access to basic human rights shouldn't be predicated on being the perfect victim now maybe stone and parker were trying to suggest that hollywood liberals similarly see figures like kim jong-il or saddam hussein as victims of u.s aggression and thus are morally elevated but for the most part nobody was really defending these people even garofalo thought that hussein should be disarmed in that fox news interview so maybe not the most apt criticism but what about celebrities dominating news coverage a point i'm hugely sympathetic to now if the message is that celebrities shouldn't have opinions it's probably not a sentiment most people agree with as divisive as this issue could seem most americans would agree with blitzchang's right to voice his support of the hong kong protests and many will also agree lebron james is within his rights to seem like a complete idiot on the same topic so many people could have been harmed not only financially but physically emotionally spiritually in other words a celebrity's opinion should be judged on the merit of that opinion not who it's coming from and more to the point does this also mean that stone and parker themselves famous for making a cartoon about potty-mouthed kids aren't entitled to an opinion this becomes especially awkward when you consider that a large swath of south park episodes are thinly veiled metaphors for their opinions they even inadvertently created a movement called south park republicans then again they're not showing up on news networks to spout their opinions if they want to ask what do celebrities know about foreign policy we can certainly ask that of them and their dap philosophy but we won't because we'd rather take the argument on its face but they're not entirely wrong either because cable news is trash it's no secret that networks like cnn and fox would rather put up a spectacle with a good heal than report anything objectively but if the argument is fox and cnn have more credible experts like political scientists and journalists that argument also has its shortcomings cable news has become a breeding ground for political insiders and other alleged experts who in academic parlance are full of but even in the context of the iraq war there was a huge failure of media organizations and their experts to properly vet the administration's motives for going to war so if parker and stone just wanted to see what the real experts had to say those experts wouldn't have saved them at least not the smooth-talking ones who would be selected by cable news in the first place and then there's the unfortunate fact that people just care more about what celebrities say even if we shouldn't so yes you can go to poli-sci professor.blogspot.com but you won't so where do we land on the topic of american foreign policy the film is kind of deep but not overly and infallibly deep because some things just don't add up and while the celebrity shtick tugs at my heartstrings i have to give it a shrug funny sure deep not quite but not dumb either so team america gets a wisecrack certified kinda deep but funny as hell [Music] thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe and catch y'all next time peace [Music] you

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 688,235

Keywords: team america, team america world police, comedy, cult comedies, political comedy, sean penn, scott rudin, george bush, 9/11, cnn, fox news, cable news, republicans, matt stone, trey parker, deep or dumb, video essay, podcast, Wisecasts, Film analysis, philosophy, Show Me the Meaning, Wisecrack Edition, What Went Wrong, Wisecrack, team america review, wisecrack team america, team america deep or dumb, team america world police review, team america reaction, team america wisecrack

Id: Dhs8_ZlnYw8

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019